How to Use Social Media for Ecommerce Like a Pro!

No one can think of building an e-commerce business without integrating it with social media.

Social media for e-commerce has become an essence for driving sales and increasing business growth. So, if you’re looking for new ways to improve your marketing strategy or planning to create your presence on social media for an e-commerce brand, you’ve come to the right place.

Here is an interesting roadmap for using social media for e-commerce to achieve your ultimate goal in the e-commerce business.

Level Up Your Social Media Game!

Random posts and interactions on social media won’t be fruitful for strategic e-commerce planning. You need to think out of the box to make it work.

But wait…

Before that, you need to work on your social media strategies as an eCommerce business and make sure that it is tailored around a specific goal. You need to add different social media platforms to your marketing strategies based on your customer’s preferences. Therefore, you need to find out the well-suited media platforms for your e-commerce business that could help to grow.

Here are some popular social media platforms that you can use as an e-commerce business-

• Facebook: The black hole of user data tracks every user’s activity inside and outside its website and application. Facebook ads are an incredible tool for outright targeting preferred audiences, and once you set the pixel and create the best ads, it is a great combination to bring out the best from your social media marketing efforts.
• YouTube: Google-owned YouTube is the most popular video streaming platform, with around 2.6 billion active users worldwide. YouTube allows e-commerce businesses to display video ads and in-feed video ads for mass awareness.
• Instagram: Instagram is a subsidiary of Facebook (now Meta) and can help you build your e-commerce business. The influencers factory and targeted ads similar to Facebook are convenient in brand building and driving traffic.
• Twitter: For e-commerce, Twitter can ideally increase the visibility of your products through tweets. Twitter ads are highly effective, as a survey concludes that around 59% of Gen Z and 55% of millennials discover new products on the platform.
• TikTok: TikTok left the Indian market during its peak when most e-commerce brands were using it for product placement and awareness. Undoubtedly, it is performing well in western countries, and it will show great potential if relaunched as the Indian version.
• Pinterest: For e-commerce, Pinterest can be marketing heaven. Compared to other social media platforms, users on Pinterest purchase products they discover organically at a much higher rate. It is partly because Pinterest users actively search for products rather than passively scrolling through feeds.
• Snapchat: This year, Snapchat turns ten years old. Besides being one of the most liked social media platforms, brands can effectively launch their eCommerce campaigns on Snapchat. E-commerce businesses can use traditional ads, branded filters, lenses, or geotags to advertise on Snapchat
• LinkedIn: E-commerce businesses can improve their brand, increase visibility, reach potential customers, and network with other professionals with the aid of a dedicated LinkedIn company page.

Now that you have gone through different social media for e-commerce, you would have a rough idea of how these are working, and each of them has its pros and cons that you might need to consider. 

Finally, choose the best alternative among them according to your requirements.

Build Your Brand Harnessing Social Media Influence

Facebook and YouTube are the top two most significant social media platforms, with over 2 billion users, and Instagram is right behind that with over 1.4 billion users who feed on the content regularly. Considering other platforms, you might see a similar figure. 

So, it makes sense for you to advertise or create organic content for the people there. Because most likely, a lot of your potential customers are using social media. 

But the critical question lies in how you can create brand awareness of your e-commerce through social media. 

You need to be productive and creative on social media platforms to be able to grab the attention of potential customers by regularly posting creative posts. Also, keep in mind advertisements won’t help you in the long run for building brands. It could make your sales go on a free fall, but your content strategy and audience engagement can help for strategic long-run brand building. 

Let me give you a few pro tips to ace your content and audience engagement strategy to significantly increase your brand awareness.

• Show Your Presence on various targeted platforms, which includes quality content, interaction with followers, and actively engaging with the audience through likes, comments, and meaningful content. But make sure your content is not redundant and ambiguous. Make a content calendar for months or weeks containing carousels, short posts, long posts, memes, infographics, and memes. The audience loves variation and engagement will surely increase.
• Giveaways and contests are tempting. Who doesn’t love free rewards or gifts? Start a contest on your social media channels and encourage your followers to take part and spread the word. 
• Share benefits from your brand not only in written form but in video and audio testimonials as well. The audiences are interested in the benefits more than the features. So, use it wisely, and you can even create a special section for showcasing these testimonials.
• Collaborating with brands will help your brand draw the attention of the hosting brand. To create social media brand awareness campaigns, team up with other brands in your niche. Do we need to mention that these companies shouldn’t be your direct rivals? 
• Brand collaboration leveraging social media influencers’ power could even create brand awareness.

Put Higher Stakes on Advertisement Bet!

E-commerce may be a gamble and advertisement a bet if you don’t have a long-run strategy. 

Social media advertising is gradually becoming a mainstream marketing campaign for most brands. The biggest ad platforms for e-commerce right now are Facebook and Instagram owned by parent company Meta Inc.

Now let’s look at various social media ads that will draw significant results for your e-commerce business.

Facebook Ads:

Facebook has established itself as the market leader in social media advertising thanks to its growing user base and an extensive array of audience targeting options. Around 96 percent of social media marketers believed Facebook to be the most successful social media advertising platform, according to an eMarketer study.

Do you know an average user (total of 2.9 billion active users) spends around 33 minutes daily on Facebook, making it one of the most spent social media platforms?  

Before we get deeper into the technicality of Facebook ads, let’s experience its benefits.

Facebook advertising helps marketers.

• Increasing visibility for their ads
• Creating brand awareness  
• Measuring clearly defined metrics and campaign goals
• Building better, more optimized campaigns in the future

Facebook ads work on the PPM (Pay Per Mile) advertising model, where it charges the business for every 1 thousand impressions. The impression is nothing but reach multiplied by frequency.

Instagram Ads

Instagram is the most popular social media platform for GenZ and millennials with a massive active user base of around 1.6 billion, Instagram makes social media e-commerce much easier. 

With custom audience targeting options, you can find your ideal viewer like on Facebook. You can create lookalikes and specify the demographics, interests, and behaviors of your target market for your products.

You can create advertisements for Instagram Stories or the main Instagram feed. Another engaging way to reach your audience is by running ads on IG TV.

Instagram Reels are a new type of content for the platform, yet there aren’t any paid advertising opportunities. The novelty of Reels may present a fantastic opportunity to test out organic reach. Get in early and tell your grandchildren that you were there when it all started.

YouTube Ads

You can advertise your video marketing content on YouTube or in search results using Google Ads, which increases the number of users who see it. YouTube offers five types of ad services for the e-commerce business.

• Video Discovery Ads are shown on the top of the page of any search result on YouTube.
• TrueView In-Stream Ads are the skippable ads shown before or between any YouTube video streaming.
• Non-Skippable Video Ads are like TrueView In-Stream Ads, and the only difference is the audience cannot skip it, so they have to watch whole 10 – 30 sec ads.
• Bumpers are the quick 3 – 5 sec ads that run before or during ads. Bumper ads run with crisp music and visuals.
• Overlay Ads are pop-up ads that are in written and visual form and appear at the bottom of the video.

Keeping the budget constraints in mind there are two types of pricing for YouTube ads: cost-per-view (CPV) and cost-per-engagement (CPE). 

You will pay CPE when customers interact with an advertisement, whereas you will pay CPV after people watch a non-skippable advertisement.

Use the Social Media Marketplace to Sell

The marketplace is an open market for sellers and customers interacting with each other for commercial dealings.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest offer a native market to the e-commerce business. 

But, you might have a question about why you should use the social media marketplace for e-commerce business, right?

Well, here are a few valid points to answer your question.

• Over 50% of users discover new products on social media, so what’s the point of dragging these users to your e-commerce website or other marketplaces? 
• It is painless and free to set up. If you don’t want to be consumed by a shit load of paperwork, choose this option.
• The sales process is comfortable for both the user and you. Set up your marketplace assembling quick communication and more promising engagement.

Ok, so now let’s look at some popular social media marketplaces-

Facebook Shop: Launched in May 2020, it provides an online marketplace for small businesses to sell their products and services. The process is free where you can make your custom store and directly connect with target audiences. Because most of the audience is on Facebook, the Facebook Shop is worth a try.

Pinterest: Creating product pins, catalogs, and tags is efficacious in selling products through the Pinterest marketplace. Another way of using Pinterest e-commerce is by integrating it with your Shopify account.

Instagram Shop: It was launched at the same time as the Facebook shop was launched, and it won’t work until you have access to the Facebook shop. Ecommerce companies can create a shareable digital catalog of their products directly on Instagram, all thanks to the Instagram Shopping feature. Customers can research products listed by thousands of e-commerce sites and buy them through the Instagram shop, or they can contact the seller through DMs and comments.

Customer Servicing through Social Media

You have already come so far and learned how to interact with customers, increase your sales and sell on social media. Now let’s discuss the final crucial strategy you can implement in your e-commerce social media marketing strategy. 

Social media customer service is an organized system of offering customer support via social media platforms which entails help before, during, and after the sale. It also covers a few other aspects.

• Handling grievances 
• Offering advice
• Responding to inquiries
• Issuing  refunds

Customer service is not only about managing the customer issue but also taking feedback. This causes a methodically planned system with committed social customer care personnel. Segment duties among various social networks and make sure there is a defined procedure for how each issue is looked into and addressed.

You can create a system that centralizes all customer issues and assigns particular messages to specific team members. Instead of managing various social media platforms, this improves the efficiency and speed of resolving customer issues.

Few Tips To Use Social Media for E-Commerce

Now that you are familiar with a roadmap for using social media for e-commerce business, it is time for you to get started and build your massive business empire.

But a few pointers you need to consider to ace the integration of your social media for e-commerce business.

• Be a smart worker, not a hard worker.
• Boosting organic posts and promoting them in advertisements is a powerful strategy.

• Handle all of your social media channels incoming messages and provide prompt responses
• Focus on every social media platform. Write, plan, and post quality content to all of your social media accounts.
• Wait for the perfect moment while posting and creating ads.
• Keep an eye out for mentions of your brand on social media and take part in pertinent conversations.

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